No abstract

We study the deconvolution of the secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) depth profiles of silicon and gallium arsenide structures with doped thin layers. Special attention is paid to allowance for the instrumental shift of experimental SIMS depth profiles. This effect is taken into account by using Hofmann's mixing-roughness-information depth model to determine the depth resolution function. The ill-posed inverse problem is solved in the Fourier space using the Tikhonov regularization method. The proposed deconvolution algorithm has been tested on various simulated and real structures. It is shown that the algorithm can improve the SIMS depth profiling relevancy and depth resolution. The implemented shift allowance method avoids significant systematic errors of determination of the near-surface delta-doped layer position.

We report the results of the first experiments on the growth of indium nitride films by electron cyclotron resonance plasma-enhanced metal organic chemical vapor deposition. Discharge sustained by the radiation of a technological gyrotron with a frequency of 24 GHz and power up to 5 kW was used to provide active nitrogen flow. The use of higher frequency microwave radiation for plasma heating provides a higher plasma density, and more active nitrogen flow. Mirror-smooth homogeneous hexagonal InN films were grown on ittria-stabilized zirconia and sapphire substrates. It was shown that single-crystal InN films can be grown on Al2O3 (0001) substrates if a double buffer layer of InN/GaN is used. The growth rate of 1 µm/h was demonstrated in this case. Film properties are studied by optical and electron microscopies, secondary ion mass spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and photoluminescence.

aWe propose a new approach to express SIMS depth profiling on a TOF.SIMS-5 time-of-flight mass spectrometer. The approach is based on the instrument capability to independently perform raster scans of sputter and probe ion beams. The probed area can be much smaller than the diameter of a sputter ion beam, like in the AES depth profiling method. This circumstance alleviates limitations on the sputter beam-raster size relation, which are critical in other types of SIMS, and enables analysis on a curved-bottomed sputter crater. By considerably reducing the raster size, it is possible to increase the depth profiling speed by an order of magnitude without radically degrading the depth resolution. A technique is proposed for successive improvement of depth resolution through profile recovery with account for the developing curvature of the sputtered crater bottom in the probed area. Experimental study of the crater bottom form resulted in implementing a method to include contribution of the instrumental artifacts in a nonstationary depth resolution function within the Hofmann's mixing-roughness-information depth model. The real-structure experiment has shown that the analysis technique combining reduction of a raster size with a successive nonstationary recovery ensures high speed of profiling at~100 μm/h while maintaining the depth resolution of about 30 nm at a 5 μm depth.